Real estate developer nominated for HCDA board

Gov. David Ige has nominated a Kakaako-based real estate developer for a seat on the board of a state agency regulating development in Kakaako.

Ige’s pick for the Hawaii Community Development Authority board is Phillip Hasha, principal of commercial property development firm The Redmont Group LLC.

The Senate Committee on Housing is scheduled to hold a confirmation hearing on HCDA board member nominees at 1:15 p.m. today in state Capitol Conference Room 414 during the Legislature’s special session.

Hasha was one of three people the Honolulu City Council named to a list from which the governor must choose to fill one of two HCDA board seats up for refilling. For the second seat, Ige nominated incumbent board member Jason Okuhama from a separate City Council list.

The City Council process was controversial because many citizens felt that another incumbent board member, Steve Scott, was unfairly excluded from an opportunity to continue serving.

Scott, owner of Kakaako-­based slipper maker Scott Hawaii, was nominated for the City Council list by Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi, who represents Kakaako. Other Council members submitted three other names, including Hasha’s.

By law, one of the two open seats must be filled by the owner of a small business in Kakaako, and the other must be filled by a Kakaako resident. On the eve of a City Council vote in March to make three nominee selections for each seat, there were just two nominees for the resident seat and four for the business seat.

Councilman Trevor Ozawa nominated Hasha for either seat, according to Ozawa senior adviser Francis Choe, because Hasha lives and works in Kakaako. But Councilwoman Kymberly Pine, who was in charge of taking nominations as chairwoman of the Zoning and Housing Committee, believed Hasha was nominated for the business owner seat, so she recommended a new name be added to the resident seat and the Council voted 5-4 to do that and leave Scott off the list for the business owner seat.

After that meeting, Councilwoman Carol Fukunaga told Scott supporters that development interests prevailed.

Board members with expertise in development can be useful to HCDA because the agency controls zoning and building standards in Kakaako. But some critics argued that the board, which also regulates affordable housing and public open space, had long been stacked with too many directors with construction industry ties.

Besides Hasha, the other picks by the Council for Scott’s seat were general contractor Jay Kadowaki and Nani Medeiros, executive director of HomeAid Hawaii, a nonprofit that assists with building or renovating facilities to help the homeless. Medeiros is a longtime affordable-housing advocate, and HomeAid’s board includes leaders of several developers active in Kakaako, including Howard Hughes Corp., Stanford Carr Development, Castle &Cooke and Alexander &Baldwin.

More than 100 individuals and organizations, including HCDA board Chairman John Whalen, signed a petition sent to Ige in March asking the governor to reject what the group called a flawed nominee list. But an Ige representative said the selection process was valid. Because the list was submitted shortly before a March 31 deadline for Ige to make his picks, the governor didn’t send the Senate his nominees before the Legislature adjourned in May. The terms of Scott and Okuhama expired June 30, and they continue to serve in holdover positions. The new terms Hasha and Okuhama are being considered for would run to June 30, 2021.

Ige also has nominated three other members for ­HCDA’s board governing two other areas the agency oversees: Donna Ann Camvel and Jo-Ann Leong for Heeia, and Maeda Timson for Kalaeloa.

“These nominees represent a wide range of expertise that will serve the HCDA and our communities well as they work to establish community development plans that are in the best interest of Hawaii’s people,” Ige said in a statement Monday.